Practice Makes Perfect
by Hallon
Summary: She feels glorious and the question slips out with one of her shaky breaths, almost on its own. Future lit, sort of.


**Practice Makes Perfect**

* * *

**Summary:** She feels glorious and the question slips out with one of her shaky breaths, almost on its own. Future lit, sort of.

**A/N:** This was a request, a long time ago, and I'm sorry to say, but I can't for the life of me remember from who, or when, or where.

Anyway, I read something recently, and it triggered images in my mind. So I sat down on a park bench with pen and paper and started writing.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

* * *

"…_from the palm of her hand against the palm of his, from their fingers locked together, and from her wrist across his wrist…"_

* * *

She has always been curious, even before they started dating the first time. But she never had the courage to ask the questions, afraid of the answers he would give.

He has never told her anything voluntarily. At least nothing of consequence, and she knows there is a reason for this.

And from what she does know, she cannot blame him.

She has seen the scars now.

Of course, she knows about Shane, because, really, how could she not? But what she knows is very little. She saw the way he kissed her and she knows they must have been doing something to make her bra end up in the backseat of his car.

But that is about it.

And she knows _they_ hardly did anything.

She thinks she regrets this now.

It changes one night when she is lying in his arms, catching her breath and waiting for the world to stop spinning. She feels glorious and the question slips out with one of her shaky breaths, almost on its own.

_How did you get so good at this?_

She is not consciously aware that she said it out loud until she hears his answer.

_Practice makes perfect._

He regrets the words instantly. She knows. But he said them and this time she doesn't take the easy way out.

It takes some convincing, but eventually he tells her.

The story is fragmented at best, as with everything he tells her about himself. That is one thing that has not changed over the years, but she has learned to live with it. And she has become very good at fitting the pieces together and reading between the lines.

He speaks into her hair and she draws patterns on his back, tracing the faint scars she knows are there.

* * *

"…_something came from her hand, her fingers, and her wrist to his that was as fresh as the first light air that moving toward you over the sea barely wrinkles the glassy surface of a calm, as light as a feather moved across one's lip, or a leaf falling when there is no breeze…"_

* * *

First there was Jenna.

Tall, blond, too much make-up, with a killer body.

The girl next door. Literally.

Before her there had been kissing and groping and pants that were suddenly too tight.

She was a few years older and when she pulled him with her into her bedroom he didn't resist. It was his fourteenth birthday, and she said it was his present from her.

She never told him how she knew, and he never asked.

That first time was over almost before it started, and he just wanted to disappear when she got up without a word and let her dress fall back down over her legs. He felt mortified and exposed and he could barely resist the urge to crawl beneath the covers and hide.

But she turned back to him after locating her underwear on the floor and told him that he better get it right the next time.

Next time was two days later and he made her scream. He still didn't last much longer than the first time, but he'd done some homework and he had always been good with his hands.

He realized quickly that she got off on teaching him and he was a good student. He made sure of that.

They never talked about themselves. And they never met for anything else.

A year later he saw her pull a scrawny kid with a look of horror filled amazement on his face towards their apartment building. She winked at him and he knew he'd never see her again. Not like that.

He felt like hitting something, but settled for throwing a loose curbstone at nothing in particular. It ended up breaking the side window of a car.

He ran.

Then he got hold of a bottle of whisky. It wasn't hard if you knew how. The liquor burned all the way down and more than once he considered throwing it away.

He didn't.

It was his fifteenth birthday.

* * *

That's when he stumbled over Elle.

He wandered into an alley and there she was, leaning against a dumpster with mascara running down her cheeks.

She was the polar opposite to Jenna. Petite, chocolate skin, big black eyes and she had a wild streak.

He stopped when he saw her and she looked up at him with a clear warning in her eyes.

He kissed her.

It wasn't a conscious decision, it just happened. And she slapped him.

Then she grabbed his bottle and gulped down a mouthful, grimacing as she swallowed, before pulling him close by his hair and attacking his mouth.

She dropped the bottle and it shattered against the cracked pavement, the amber liquid spilling unnoticed over their shoes.

The first time was right there against the brick wall in the alley. He was grateful she was so small because he didn't think he would've been able to hold them up otherwise.

She followed him home afterwards.

In the morning he had a pounding headache, his sheets were stained with blood and his back riddled with scratch marks.

He didn't really care, because it was a pain he could live with.

They spent the rest of the summer holed up in his bedroom, using the fire escape to get in and out. They blocked the door with his bed and went through his record collection twice trying to drain out the shouting and crashes from the other side.

He left purple and maroon marks all over her neck, shoulders, breasts… His back never got a chance to heal.

But it was ok.

First day back in school he found her waiting for him on his way to history class and without a word he followed her through the corridors. She pushed him into an empty classroom and he had her pressed up against the door before she could fully close it behind her.

When they left his shirt was missing two buttons and she had bruises from the desk on her thighs.

School was never the same after that.

A week later he knew she was gone. He never found out what happened to her.

For three months he didn't touch another girl.

His back healed.

* * *

Lisa was different.

She was pretty, but she hid herself under baggy clothes and never spoke above a whisper.

He had known her since he was four. They had never been friends, not really, but she'd always been around. He just never thought of her as anything more than the gawky girl he grew up with.

Until one night at a party he hadn't been invited to.

They were both drunk and suddenly she kissed him. It was awkward and he instantly knew she had never been kissed before.

Then she told him that she loved him.

He didn't know if he was more stunned by the words themselves, or the fact that she had raised her voice.

He kissed her again because he didn't know what else to do. And he kind of liked it.

She didn't have any experience at all and it was his turn to be the teacher. She was more than willing to learn.

She was nice. And he couldn't deny that he liked the attention.

She did exactly what he told her to do and soon she was so good at anticipation what he wanted that she knew before he did.

Then he got bored.

He met Samantha at another party, right before Spring break and got her alone in the upstairs bathroom. It was one drunken night and he could never quite remember what she looked like.

Lisa saw them come back out and it didn't take a genius to figure out what they had been doing.

She ran away crying and never spoke to him again.

He felt bad about it. He really did. He wanted to apologize but he knew words would never make it undone.

He never did anything like that again.

* * *

Marissa had a thing for tortured souls.

He met her a few weeks later after being cornered in the apartment by Liz's latest prize.

He had managed to get out of the apartment and down to the park. She found him slumped on a bench and took pity on him.

He refused to go to the hospital.

He'd tried that the first time, and he didn't want to deal with the pity if he told the truth. And lying would hardly be better. He guessed he had a cracked rib or two, but knew it could've been worse.

And he'd always healed before.

Instead she put an arm around him and slowly guided him to her apartment. He hurt too much to protest.

He was rewarded with a warm shower and a soft bed.

She cleaned his cuts, dabbed his bruises with cold water and wrapped his chest tightly in gauze.

He stayed there a week.

He never intended for anything to happen, it didn't even cross his mind until she crawled into bed with him on the fifth night. It took a moment for his mind to catch up and when it did she was already kissing him.

He ached all over and it was still hard to breathe. But he was lonely and there was no denying that she knew what she was doing.

He didn't protest.

It was slow and painful and he never wanted to stop.

Two nights later she had her hands securely fastened in his hair and he was kissing his way down her stomach when the door opened and her father rushed in. At least he assumed it was her father.

A second later he was hauled off the bed and thrown out of the apartment. He spent twenty excruciating seconds standing there in his boxers, trying to breathe past the constricting sensation in his chest, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now.

Then the door opened again and his clothes were thrown out together with a string of impressive curses.

Everything was there but his shoes.

He quickly got dressed, feeling humiliated and imagining eyes watching him from behind every door on the floor, and then he left. The streets of New York were far from ideal to walk through without shoes, but he didn't have much of a choice.

He had seen the look in the man's eyes.

The only other option he had at the moment was to steal a pair and he realized quickly that he was in no shape to try. He had no desire to get caught if he couldn't pull it off.

When he climbed into his room his feet were bleeding.

Two weeks later he ran into Marissa again. At the same bench in the same park. He was covered in new bruises and it still hurt to breathe.

He walked away and didn't look back.

* * *

Liz started spending more time at home, and as a consequence he spent more and more time away.

He got to know a guy with easy access to hard liquor.

Then followed a series of parties with kissing and groping under flashing lights and drunken encounters in bathrooms and unfamiliar bedrooms.

He woke up one morning in a tangle of limbs. He had a splitting headache and absolutely no idea where he was or how he got there. His arm was bent at an odd angle and he had a knee in his back.

He opened his eyes a fraction and in the dim light that filtered through the blinds he took in the brunette snoring a few inches from his face. Her leg was wedged between his and her hand rested against his chest.

There was a brief recollection of cheap scotch, strawberry lip gloss and hungry kisses on a dance floor.

Then he froze.

That was not a knee poking him and the arm that was slung over his waist was most definitely male.

He was off the bed in two seconds and nearly doubled over from the sudden pounding behind his eyes. With difficulty he suppressed the urge to throw up.

He stumbled through the room and pulled his clothes on with shaking hands. His shirt was inside out but he hardly noticed. He needed to get out of there.

The bright sunlight hit him like a ton of bricks when he burst through the front door and out into the street. He closed his eyes and reached out a hand to steady himself. Then he walked home and stood under the cold water of the shower until his whole body was numb.

As the pain dissipated, so did the fog in his mind, and suddenly every detail of last night came back in sharp clarity.

He had been an idiot. But not that big of an idiot.

He still went to get tested.

There was a form to fill out with boxes to cross for the different tests. He crossed them all.

In the empty space intended for age he wrote 15. Then he remembered and changed it to 16.

Silently he added a caption.

Happy birthday asshole.

* * *

The waiting was the worst part. He spent four months walking around like a tightly strung bow. Or maybe he was the arrow waiting to be released.

He stopped drinking.

The first tests all came back negative, and he let himself relax a little. But there was still that huge dark shadow looming over him and he couldn't escape it.

He tried.

He lost count of all the times he pulled back at the last minute, blocking out the angry words as he got dressed.

Frustration, anger, confusion, resentment…he knew them all well. They became his most trusted companions.

More than once he left with his cheek stinging from a clearly visible handprint. And he got used to ducking as he left the room.

He could take the pain and the curses.

He couldn't take the risk.

The final results arrived two days before Halloween. He stared at the anonymous envelope for an eternity before he tore it open and let out a strangled breath as he found the liberating word in the middle of the page.

Negative.

He'd never felt so drained in his entire life.

He crumpled the paper in his hand and brought out his lighter. The white sheet burned quickly and he watched transfixed as the flames licked his fingers.

He felt nothing.

He didn't celebrate. He just sat on the fire escape and smoked a whole pack of cigarettes. Then he slammed his knuckles into the brick wall.

He welcomed the pain. It meant he was still alive.

* * *

He met Emma a week later and he dove right in.

She was a breath of fresh air and he got lost in her smiles. He never knew anyone could smile that much.

She tasted like peppermint and he tickled her just to hear her laugh.

He was used to rough and desperate. She liked it slow and gentle.

He did everything he could to make her happy.

He wanted so badly to make her stay because he thought that maybe, just maybe, she could show him what happiness was.

He let himself believe that it could last. He was drowning and he didn't even know it until it was too late.

Afterwards he told himself he should have known better.

There were tears in her eyes when she told him it was over, that she hoped he would find what he was looking for, but that she couldn't be it.

He swallowed to suppress the unfamiliar feeling in his throat and kissed her desperately. It was the only thing he could think to do to make her stay and it didn't work.

He watched her walk away and he didn't know how to breathe.

It was years later that he finally allowed himself to put a name to what she had made him feel for three short months.

* * *

That spring was filled with faces and names that blurred together in his mind.

After Emma he had adopted an air of open hostility, but it only seemed to serve the opposite purpose than the one intended.

He refused no one who dared to approach him.

Maybe it was the reputation he got after a while that he knew what he was doing.

Or maybe he was just there.

He only kept them for as long as it took to learn their secrets and that time got gradually shorter as spring turned into summer.

It was far from satisfying, but it gave no room for feelings. He couldn't afford feelings.

He never made any promises and he gave no apologies.

* * *

Kim and Tamara was a mistake.

He knew it the moment he felt that second pair of hands running up his back, but the thought didn't fully register until he lay, catching his breath, and watched them kiss above his chest.

It wasn't that it was bad, far from it. But it brought back bad memories.

He lay there, in a tangle of arms and legs, as the angry red numbers of a digital clock in the corner mercilessly announced his seventeenth birthday.

The irony wasn't lost on him.

* * *

In late August the landlord finally had enough. They had until eight that night to pay up, or they'd be thrown out.

He knew that this time the threat wasn't empty.

Liz was passed out on the couch, as usual, and his job didn't pay nearly enough to cover three months of overdue rent. It barely covered food and water.

They had nothing left worth selling.

He got the money and five minutes short of deadline he handed it over. He had been forced to sleep in the streets too many times, and the prospect of a repeat was highly motivating.

Unfortunately he'd been desperate enough to get careless and the next night there were two cops waiting for him in the apartment when he stumbled in with a blonde he'd picked up outside a bar.

At the time he had been exploring her mouth, trying to ignore the stale taste of cheap alcohol, her legs fastened securely around his hips. He had gotten better at holding them up.

She saw the uniforms first and bit down on his tongue hard enough to draw blood.

He nearly dropped her.

She was out the door again before the cops had time to react. For a second he contemplated following her, but decided not to.

It was pointless and would only make things worse.

Liz watched it all from the couch, her eyes slightly glazed over and he almost expected her to wave as they left.

He was still a minor and his defender was obviously still naïve enough to think there was hope for everyone. She got the judge to agree to extenuating circumstances.

He got six weeks, with the chance of early release for good behavior.

He made sure he didn't get out early.

He got free food and regular showers. He spent his time reading everything the library had to offer. The others usually left him alone.

It wasn't too bad.

* * *

The day after he was released he was sent to Stars Hollow and his whole world was turned upside down.

He met _her_.

After that there was only one name on his mind. One face, one smile, one shade of blue.

He did his best not to care because he knew what happened if you allowed yourself to be weak. The problem was that he just didn't know how.

He should have run as far away as he could when she smiled at him that first time. But he didn't.

And then it was too late.

There was just something about her that he could never quite grasp.

She was like a magnet, drawing him in, and he wasn't strong enough to resist. She wormed her way into his very being and when he finally caught on he was beyond saving.

She kissed him and for a few blissful seconds his world made sense.

Then she was gone.

He waited. He knew he was pathetic and still he waited.

One day he saw _him_ reading a letter from _her_.

That night he went out and got drunk. He told himself it was to celebrate his eighteenth birthday.

* * *

Shane hardly registered.

He knew how that sounded, but he could never muster up the energy to care.

She was a distraction, his last line of defense, a desperate attempt to go back to a world where everything was black and white and it didn't hurt to breathe.

He tried to drone out the pain in the backseat of his beat up car, but it did nothing to stop the dreams that haunted him at night.

The first time he closed his eyes and pictured _her_. Then she breathed out his name and the illusion was ruined.

He felt like breaking something.

* * *

Then _she_ was his and he finally knew how it felt to be happy.

It was delicious torture cleverly hidden behind a mask of innocent smiles and chocolate kisses. Touching her was like touching fire. It boiled his blood and made every hair on his body stand on end.

It made him question if he had ever truly been alive before.

And he tried.

He really did.

But he hadn't changed. Not really. And he just wasn't good enough.

She deserved the world and he didn't even know how to give himself.

He did his best to ignore the abyss that was slowly swallowing him, but eventually the edges collapsed and he was left with the knowledge that he had ruined the one good thing he had ever been given.

He realized he would always love her when he stood in the blinding sunlight at a beach in California, holding a payphone to his ear and listened to her saying goodbye. He thought it fitting that the one girl he had barely touched was the one that captured his heart.

He wanted to scream and drown the pain in the bottom of a bottle.

He did neither.

More than anything he wanted to go back and beg for her forgiveness.

He just didn't know how.

So he calmly walked away, feeling his heart break as he remembered her tearful words that would forever be carved into his soul.

He spent his nineteenth birthday alone and miserable, and wished he could've been stronger.

* * *

He tried to live without _her_, hating every minute of it.

He managed. Barely.

He did what he had always said he would. He traveled. He should have been happy, but he wasn't sure he knew what the word meant anymore.

Then he saw her. She was even more beautiful than he remembered, and he was so frightened he hardly knew what he was doing.

He ran, and he ran and then he ran out of road.

He told her.

Those three words he had never told anyone. Had never thought he'd ever say.

And when they reached his ears he was seized by a terror so complete that the only thing he could do was run.

Again.

It took a week to realize what he had done.

It took a month to realize it could never be enough.

* * *

It was an impulse that made him go see _her_ again. An impulse propelled by desperation.

He had tried putting his life back together and he had failed.

He didn't know how to live without her anymore and he made himself believe that if he just wanted it badly enough he could make her see it too.

It all went wrong.

He pleaded with her and every word she said cut him to the bone. He barred his soul and then watched helplessly as the axe came down.

When the final rejection left her lips he felt himself break.

He came back to reality halfway to New York and he could never remember how he had gotten there. He passed the city, never even considering stopping, and just continued driving.

He drove until his car ran out of gas.

When the engine finally stalled it hit him again and he stumbled out into the deserted street, feeling sick.

This was it. And it was his fault.

He spent months trying to forget her and nearly killed himself in the process. On his twentieth birthday he got caught in a gang fight and stumbled into a hospital with a bullet in his shoulder.

Falling was easy.

It took far longer trying to pick up the pieces.

* * *

He wrote.

It was the only way he could keep himself from falling deeper.

He looked for comfort wherever he could find it. He never asked for their names, and still he could never forget them.

For a short time he gave them everything he had to give. He had always been good with his hands. So to speak.

And he watched them, waiting, hoping for something he could never quite put into words.

It never came.

Every time the guilt ripped him apart and he was left with a dull sense of hopelessness. They could never be what he wanted them to be.

They never noticed and he never told them.

He could never stop looking.

He wondered how long he could possibly go on, but he refused to give up because that would make him a coward and he couldn't risk it being true.

He rarely went back to anyone. Never a third time.

He never brought them home.

He perfected the art of disappearing, and as he left, their taste still lingering on his tongue, he felt like screaming.

He got the first copies of his book on his twenty first birthday, and he wanted to tell _her_.

Eventually it became easier to pretend he was okay.

After a while he almost believed it himself.

* * *

He went to see _her_, quite deliberately, because he had to know.

She had changed.

He felt strangely calm the entire time, despite the fact that he sometimes wanted to shake the woman inhabiting her body.

He barely recognized her anymore and he couldn't decide if what he felt was sorrow or relief.

It was easier if he told himself it was relief.

Slowly he relearned how to breathe and he thought that maybe, just maybe, one day he would be okay.

* * *

_She_ came to see him and he learned the hard way that he had never stopped hoping.

And when he tasted her again, it was ecstasy.

Pure and simple.

He watched her leave and wondered when he had lost track of who he was.

Bitterly he thought that maybe this was what it meant to grow up. Having someone shatter you into a million pieces and still want them to be happy.

* * *

Maria came into his life like a tornado.

She yelled at him, red hair trailing her like flames and green eyes simmering with righteous fury.

It took him less than a minute to realize she had mistaken him for someone else, and then he just watched her, not even trying to hide his amusement.

It took her almost fifteen minutes and she still hadn't started to recycle her insults. He had to admit he was slightly impressed. She stopped suddenly, in the middle of a word, and slapped him.

Then she kissed him.

It was his twenty second birthday and he tried not to make the obvious connection.

He asked her about it later, in the darkness of his bedroom. She said it had been something she had to do, and he thought he knew what she meant.

They fought all the time. He could never remember over what, or how she managed to get him so riled up that he shouted right back at her.

But it felt good, so he didn't really care.

She was gorgeous when she was angry, and even more so afterwards when he made her scream for entirely different reasons.

He knew there was _someone_, the same way she knew about _her_.

They both knew what this thing they had was. And it was okay. Sometimes he even allowed himself to think that they were good for each other.

He asked her about _him_ once. That was the only time he saw her cry.

She asked him about _her_ once. He shrugged and wished he hadn't forgotten how to cry a long time ago.

One drunken night she made a crack about how, if they ever got married, she would get the perfect last name, and he laughed, because what else could he possibly do.

He knew it was over when she came by one day and couldn't quite hide her smile. She didn't say anything and he didn't ask any questions.

He just wished her good luck.

She kissed him on the cheek and left with a thank you hanging in the air.

He started writing again.

* * *

He opened the door one day and found himself face to face with _her._

She wore a look of nervous terror mixed with hope. It made her eyes shine and he held his door open for her to enter.

He wondered when he had become so set on destroying himself.

He watched silently as she unpacked a small cake, lighted the sole candle on the top, and with shaking hands held it out to him.

Quietly she told him to make a wish.

His heart ached painfully, and as he blew out the candle, never taking his eyes off her, he wished for the only thing he had ever wanted.

When he held her in his arms and felt the still familiar flames searing every inch of his body, he realized how much he had truly missed her. He held her close, feeling her heart beat against his chest and her hands grasp almost desperately at his shirt.

That was the day he relearned how to cry.

It was his twenty third birthday and for the first time in years he dared to believe there was still hope for him.

* * *

"… _so light that it could be felt with the touch of their fingers alone, but that was so strengthened, so intensified, and made so urgent, so aching, and so strong by the hard pressure of their fingers and the close-pressed palm and wrist…"_

* * *

He gently wipes the tears from her eyes and it is only then that she notices them.

_I'm sorry._

His words are quiet, and as always it takes her by surprise when she hears that tiny shred of uncertainty in his voice. He always seems so confident that she finds it easy to forget this side of him.

She holds him close and whispers into his hair.

_I love you._

His lips are soft against hers and she swallows his words, accepting the promise they hold.

_I love you._

_Always._

* * *

"…_that it was as though a current moved up his arm and filled his whole body with an aching hollowness of wanting."_

* * *

**A/N:** I honestly don't know why I enjoy torturing Jess so much.

Thank you for reading. I'd love to hear what you think, even if it's only to tell me it's a big waste of time.


End file.
